The Latest in the Mali Hotel Attack

Security forces conducted room-by-room searches amid sporadic gunfire, news reports said.

“Mali is not a closed area and it never will be”.

At least 10 people have been confirmed dead in Friday’s attack on a five-star hotel in Bamako, Mali, Malian army Col. Mamadou Coulibaly told reporters, per CNN.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who stood next to French President François Hollande at the Charlie Hebdo march in Paris in January, has visited the Radisson Blu hotel.

According to the President, “Mali will not shut down because of this attack, Paris was not shut down and still isn’t”.

Two people have “locked in” 140 guests and 30 employees in an ongoing hostage-taking at a hotel in Bamako, the Radisson hotel chain said in a statement on Friday (Nov 20).

Mali has been torn apart by unrest since the north fell under the control of Al-Qaeda-linked militants in 2012.

“Nowhere in the world is one safe from these barbarians from another era”, he said, adding that the attackers had “decided to break with humanity”.

An Israeli national was among 19 people killed by Islamist militants who attacked a hotel in Mali, media said on Saturday. In August, they stormed a hotel in central Mali in August, killing at least 12 people in an attack similar to Friday’s.

The victims included several Russians, three Chinese, two Belgians and American woman Anita Datar, 41, who had been working in Bamako – Mali’s capital – as a USA envoy for worldwide development firm Palladium. Al Mourabitoun and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) already had claimed responsibility.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to Mali over the attack, as a security source revealed a few suspects were still at large.

Two separate Islamist groups have said they carried out the attack.

The militant is said to be the leader of an attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013, in which 38 mostly Western hostages were killed.

A security guard says Islamic extremists timed the assault perfectly – storming the hotel just as guards finished morning prayers, put away their weapons and were changing shifts.

For many Malians, the attacks on the hotel were a painful reminder of the instability the former French colony has endured over recent years.